Special Education

The 1993 Education Reform Act in Massachusetts set statewide goals
to boost student learning, accountability, and teacher quality. And it
provided additional dollars to help schools in their reform efforts.
But for many districts, those dollars instead are going to pay for
special education, a recent report says.

On average, per-pupil special education expenditures statewide grew
by almost $4,000 from fiscal 1990 to 1995, while they increased only
$305 in regular education, says the report, released last month by the
Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

"The Education Reform Act set ambitious new standards and dedicated
significant funds for the improvement of education," the report says.
"However, for the majority of districts, the increase in special
education spending has meant that little of the new funds allocated to
education have been available for the improvement of regular
education."

For most districts, the main causes of the rising costs were
increases in the numbers of preschool children and foster-care children
placed in a local community who required special education services,
the report found. In addition, special education costs increased in
some communities when students who had been attending specialized
private schools at taxpayer cost moved in from other districts.

Not only are there more preschool children who need special
education, but those children have more significant disabilities than
in the past. Medical advances in recent years have meant that severely
disabled children who otherwise would not have survived childhood are
entering public school systems.

What people should take away from the report is that rising costs in
Massachusetts are real, said Sheldon H. Berman, the superintendent of
the Hudson, Mass., schools and a co-chairman of the task force that
produced the report.

"We have to stop blaming schools or parents" for the rising costs,
he said. "Special education costs more today and will continue to cost
more five years from now. It's a reality and until we address it, we'll
compromise education for all children."

Massachusetts has the highest percentage of students in special
education in the country--about 17 percent, the report says. Many
people have interpreted the state's special education law as requiring
a higher level of service than is mandated under federal law. The
report calls for the state to alter the law, change the way it pays for
special education, and better address the social and economic causes of
increased special education costs.